


The Power of Repitition

by livelovehump



Category: Star Trek (2009)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-04-04
Updated: 2011-04-04
Packaged: 2017-10-17 14:32:37
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,027
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/177863
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/livelovehump/pseuds/livelovehump
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dr. Leonard McCoy speaks in catchphrases.  People have noticed.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Power of Repitition

**Author's Note:**

> This is totally dedicated to [brokenvixen @ IJ](http://brokenvixen.insanejournal.com/). I've combed through it a few times, but it's officially un-beta'd so all mistakes are my own!

“Captain, may I ask you what he said?” Jim Kirk’s eyes shot up when the young nurse addressed him. She was definitely new; she seemed nervous, overly polite and professional. Still, Jim had no idea what she was asking about.

He shot the nurse a confused look from where he sat on a biobed holding some pressure on a nasty cut on his hand. “What do you mean, ‘what he said?’”

She was about to elaborate, but she was stopped by a familiar blonde speaking up instantly as she passed by. “Not the time or place, Ensign,” Christine Chapel scolded mildly, sending the other nurse on her way with some instruction about getting back to her job of making sure the medical files had the most recent data in them. She offered him a small, professional nurses’ smile. “Captain, I need to see your hand.”

He held it out to her without question. After a couple of long moments of silent prodding-- and a tiny wince from him as she touched something that actually hurt (one he was sure she noted but acted like she hadn’t)-- he repeated the question. “What was she talking about?”

Jim was amused to note that Christine actually looked a bit embarrassed by the question. It was the look of a child getting their hand caught in the cookie jar so to speak. It was a look Jim imagined would be on his face fairly often, that is, if he actually felt any shame at all. On Christine it only fueled his curiosity.

“It’s not important at the moment.”

“Oh, come on, Christine, now I’m just curious.” The first time he’d met her had been at the academy. He’d shown up at Starfleet medical drunk and almost naked, and she’d been the (fortunate, in his head; and unfortunate, in her head) person to have to deal with him. After a meeting like that, he found it hard to be completely professional, especially if you ended up a friendly enough acquaintance with that person and even more so if you were on a first name basis off duty.

Hell, he was surprised she could call him ‘Captain’ with a straight face, and there she went, saying it just then in a tone that reminded him surprisingly of a schoolteacher ready to scold a six year old student. “ _Captain_ ,” she seemed to instantly loose steam even if he figured she wanted to chastise him about professional behavior. (She was _Christine Chapel_. Of course, she wanted to.) She was just also an extremely intelligent woman who knew that a curious Jim Kirk wasn’t something you could actually deny for long. She looked around the sickbay to make sure no one was listening in.

“There’s...” She sighed as if she was getting ready to confess something that might not exactly be on the up and up. She reached for a dermal regenerator. “You’re Dr. McCoy’s best friend,” she began, lifting his hand gently to run the machinery over it. “I’m sure you’ve noticed that he... well, he’s rather like a character in a popular holovid series sometimes. The man, he speaks in-- I can’t believe I”m going to say this, but he speaks in _catchphrases_ for lack of a better word.”

This was something that sure as hell hadn’t escaped Jim Kirk’s notice. In fact he found the predictability of the things Bones tended to say rather hilarious himself, but he waited for her to continue. “Dr. McCoy,” she began again with a strange professionalism even if they were talking about _catchphrases_. It almost made Jim roll his eyes because it wasn’t as if the entire ship _didn’t_ know what Bones and Christine were getting up to behind closed doors, and if they really _weren’t_ , what they _should_ be doing. All Jim knew (officially) was when he mentioned it, Bones just glowered at him.

She shook her head as if she was deciding to take a different track with this and began again. “On your away mission, two security personnel were injured, not severely, but they _were_ hurt. You missed two communication reports to the _Enterprise_ , and Mr. Spock was ready to send Sulu to lead up a rescue mission to find you guys. At some point Dr. McCoy said, ‘Damnit, I’m a doctor, not a something.’ I need to know what that something was.”

“Why?”

Christine cleared her throat and didn’t meet his eyes as she was still taking care of his hand. She shut off the regenerator and looked his hand over with a medically critical gaze. “For the pool.”

Jim couldn’t help the long, loud laugh that escaped him. “You guys have a pool going and no one told me?! I’m hurt.”

Christine shrugged. “Not all of our staff knows you like Dr. McCoy. Some of them are new and a little nervous since gambling is technically against regulations. I just need to know what he said.” She said with a smile, handing him his hand back. “Good as new.”

“Manicurist,” he answered.

The look that came over Christine’s face at that moment was more than enough to make his answer worth it. She looked blankly at him for a second before blinking. “Oh Lord, Jim,” Ha, one point to him for the slip of Christine’s careful professional way of addressing people! “Are you _serious_?”

“As a reaction to the vaccine to Melvaran mud fleas,” he responded dryly.

She still looked shocked. “I’ll... Well, I’ll be sure to let people know,” she said regaining enough composure to make a few notes on the PADD she was holding. “You’re free to go Captain,” she said, once again sounding like a nurse, and not someone who was just talking about illicit gambling in sickbay.

He hopped off the biobed. “I have fifty credits on ‘Gourmet sandwich maker.’”

Christine cast a critical eye over him. “You can not set him up for it, sir.”

He shot her a smile. “Now, I’d never do something as low as to _cheat_.”

She released an undignified snort of laughter at that, and as he left the area he could swear he heard something that sounded like ‘ _Kobayashi Maru_.’


End file.
